Looking for the Answer

There's a shed-load of stuff going on at the minute. I really didn't think that life could get much more complicated than it has been in recent years, but, as has become the standard, I was wrong.

I find life pretty confounding at the best of times, and these are most certainly not the best of times. What with University work, health (or lack thereof) issues and all the other things that the majority of people seem to think are par-for-the-course in daily life, I am utterly bemused and not entirely at ease.

University

I recently discovered that my skill set and unit choices have me headed (if I survive the year) towards a career involving programming - in no way did this scenario ever present itself in any previously considered 'game-plan' of my life. Thus I am having, whilst still attempting to do the relevant coursework, to completely reassess my plans and adjust to the thought of becoming a code-monkey.

Now, I had just decided that I actually did enjoy programming, particularly Java, and then I went and failed my Autonomous Systems Coursework. Don't get me wrong, I think I have established the problem, and there is a chance that I could fix it, but I'm somewhat broken myself at the minute. I got myself worked up into such a state that my parents were willing to come and pick me up, take me back to Hounslow, and let me forget University altogether. I ended up handing in the broken code, and I now can't look at the program without verging on the catatonic. Weirdly, this does not suggest 'programmer' to me.

Oh, yes, and I have a number of other units and my thesis which are suffering similar fates, partly (although I suspect not entirely) due to the extreme, over-arching reaction generated by the catastrophe of Autonomous Systems.

Health

This is currently a substantial area of concern for me. There's a lot going on which is complicated and may or may not have a bearing on the majority of my future decisions. I will, I hope, have a few more answers on the health front in the next couple of weeks, but I'm very much in limbo until then. This limbic sensation is also bleeding over into my academic work and being very disruptive to my thought patterns and motivations. It is very distracting.

Daily Life

From getting out of bed in the mornings, through to diving under the duvet at bed-time, people seem to do an astonishing number of 'things'. For a start, while they may not do it willingly, I have noticed that most people don't seem to feel that getting out of bed in the morning is the sort of event which is tremendously momentous or requires much careful planning, weighing-up of variables, and overcoming the gut-wrenching disappointment over the fact that death did not make a delivery during the night. This is how my day starts, and it tends to continue in a similar vein. The level of difficulty seems to be increasing, and trying to explain, and even justify, this way of existing is almost impossible. I think it likely that a lot of the stigma I feel is self-imposed, but when I hear how other people are 'getting by', it really does seem like I have gone substantially wrong somewhere.

Every day is a struggle against the desire to end it all. When you live like this, to scare, no, petrify, even yourself with the intensity of your own suicidal urges, that's a situation to take note of. To make matters worse, we were told today that the new project for Autonomous Systems had been posted on the unit web page. I opened the page, but before I could get any further I was struck with the same feelings I had at the end of the last project. Not only did I wish more than anything that my head would burst into flames and burn my brains away, it felt like I was experiencing something about as painful, but unfortunately not as fatal.

The general consensus is that you should tell someone when you feel that bad. God knows why, but my pride won't let me say it out loud, although it will let me post it here - perhaps it's a stepping stone. Anyway, here's me telling 'someone': I'm on the edge and the cliff is crumbling.

The Voices

My schedule has my final "Work" period of the day down as 1900-2100, but having been a bit under the weather lately (I caught a couple of the "start-of-term" bugs that're always flying around academia at this time of year), I have let myself stop at 2000 instead, with a few more breaks during the day as well. Hopefully as term progresses and my health improves, I will gradually increase the number of working hours again - I see the coursework decreeing a few "all-nighters" in the (not so distant) future too... If you want to know the sort of thing my coursework entails, I have a blog chronicling my final year which, although currently quite sparse, will hopefully, during the year, shed some light on what is apparently quite an obscure discipline to a lot of people.

In the meantime, here is a poem I wrote about 10 minutes ago - it's a bit "meta" since this was written to try and quell some of the noise to which it refers:

It's noisy in my head,
Like a telly on the blink.
But the noise is more than static -
There are madmen in my attic.

How can I make them see,
That these half-formed words and sounds
Just flood my brain and knock me down -
It only takes an inch to drown?

I hope they mean no harm,
But their presence all the same
Really does me no good at all -
True thoughts displaced by inane drawl.

Here We Go Again Then

Who would have thought it - I made it to the start of my Master's year? When I was growing up, particularly in my teenage years, one of the things that I considered to be an inevitability in my future would be the acquisition of a degree. The astonishing effort to get this far was not something that I remember featuring in this prophecy, and the exhaustion which it has generated was more than a little surprising and deflating. I am thus looking forward to my final year with mixed feelings. In principle, University has been fantastic, the majority of my units over the last few years have been things that, had I been in better health, would have been of great interest to me, and so I should be tremendously excited... There is, however, also the increased sense of trepidation which has been steadily growing since I was told that I had passed last year's exams, and is in fact only the latest, almost seamlessly transferred, incarnation of fear which has engulfed me for a number of years. Basically, my anxiety seems to have more lives than the Master - every time I think it's dead, it glows a little and returns in a newly regenerated form of madness.

This time next week I will have had my first day at Uni. I say day, but I think that it will be one lecture only on Monday. In fact, before Christmas I believe I have an average of 8.6 contact hours a week. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is one of those degrees where you have a couple of lectures a week and then spend the rest of the time drinking and sleeping - I will study 8 units and write a thesis (with accompanying website and poster design) in the course of this academic year, and I can quite easily envisage putting in a lot of 60 hour weeks before I am through. If anybody is reading this and happens to be interested in the work I do, I plan to maintain an online chronicle of what a final year in Engineering Mathematics entails, hopefully at a level accessible even to the sciencephobic.

The hope is that this year will progress in a smoother fashion than those preceding it, but as I am not renowned for my optimism, I am not going to lay odds on it. As usual - and based on everyone insisting that it's the healthy thing to do - I will attempt, during term-time, to assign more recreational activities to my schedule, which probably means I will try and reinstate my Word of the Week hobby, and perhaps begin writing and taking photos again. The likelihood of renewed panic seems to be quite high, and as this site has been designed as a venting place, I imagine numerous dark and/or inane ramblings will appear here in the near future.

I see a pattern emerging...

Different poem, same theme:

And how,
In this world of promise and light,
Do you see so little
In the way of illumination?
Could it,
Though, in truth, I shudder to ask,
Be that your blinkered eyes
Look not for a brighter path than this?
Tis plain
This lethargy runs far too deep
Dulling the mind and wit -
An apathy to be fought in vain.
A cloak
Is draped heavy about the heart
An enveloping force
Quells a passion never even there.

A Conversation

I feel like a ship
Broken in two

But everything's fine
What's wrong with you?

Waves of confusion
Break on a forgotten shore

But you got what you want
You can hardly want more?

If the answer were simple
Would the question exist?

What question is that
I don't follow your gist?

I wish I knew
And could see some light

Why do you feel so wrong
When it's all going right?

Why is it no different
When I see what I've got?

How is it that still
You're not content with your lot?

Contentment is one thing
Harder to reach is an easy mind

So you're sticking with melancholia
To accompany your daily grind?

Sounds of Simon

A number of people have expressed a desire to see what my writing is like when framed in a more up-beat context, so here is a contracted review of my favourite musician, instigated by the glorious (and most likely once in a lifetime) experience of having seen him in concert this week.

Disclaimer: These opinions, while stated as fact for the purpose of publication, are entirely my own. You are perfectly free to disagree with the ideas presented here, in the same way as I am perfectly free to hold them in the first place.

Unless you are a complete heathen – and I am aware that such people do exist – it seems to me to be impossible not to appreciate Paul Simon on some level. A master wordsmith and the embodiment of versatility, his career has spanned over half a century. Does that mean that he had a career and then spent the proceeding few decades milking it and thanking heaven that he didn’t die along with so many of his contemporaries? Certainly not! His current tour is not a mere nostalgia trip: he is in fact promoting his 16th studio album (that is, not including soundtracks, lives or compilations), So Beautiful Or So What. Nor is it a comeback, since he never really went away. True, he is not churning out an album a year, or whatever the going rate is these days for those new artists who manage not to be a one-hit wonder, but his last was only 5 years ago. When you consider that he is a family man, still semi-regularly touring, approaching his 70th birthday, who has produced a record containing such beautifully and intricately arranged original tracks, that timespan suddenly moves from the mundane to the phenomenal.

Why do I say he should appeal to everyone? The expert spanning and conjoining of genres and, indeed, cultures – as witnessed by the African/Caribbean influences and collaborations in his recent works; the mix of subtlety and transparency in his wordplay, generating the span from tears to chills, to laughter; the glorious instrumentation and rhythms, causing an inescapable urge to move and give in to the call of the beat; his ability to remain continuously relevant, with old and new material alike; his continual productivity, and his general, all-round ‘nice-guy’ attitude combined with his dedication to his music, his band and his fans are but a taster of the virtues of a man whom I have no compunction about describing as an artistic genius.

Thought Saturation

I have been trying a lot of things lately to try not to think about my impending exam results. Today I was editing and finishing off an essay that I started a while ago. This particular piece was tricky to finish for reasons which will become clear if you read it as the subject matter is somewhat self-explanatory.

As always with my writing, it was a difficult decision upon completion as to whether to publish or burn the piece. Two times out of three I will opt for burning (or in some way seeking to destroy), but this time I thought it might be interesting to publish and gauge opinions.

So, if you fancy taking a look, please click the following link: THIS IS THE LINK.

If you do decide to read it, please let me know what you think. This is still a relatively early draft, but without having an English teacher anymore, it's hard for me to look at it objectively to see where to improve.

Have Stamps, Will Write…

I am an amateur writer. I’m not particularly fussy about what I write, I have tried my hand at poetry, fiction and letter-writing, and am even an occasional essayist.

Obviously, there is also this ‘blog, although I will admit that I am unsure as to the classification of this particular type of word-play. I suppose that it has become a class of its own over the years, but it must have developed from something previously established. The derivation of the term (originally web-log) is, of course, from logging in the way that Sea Captains and the like would chronicle events of a certain period of time. As such, my instinct would be to assume that it is a type of mongrel literary species, primarily from the journal genus, which is itself a combination of letter-writing and essaying. However, I digress.

Essentially, the purpose of this post is to tout for “custom”. If you are the sort of person who likes to receive random ramblings through the post, then let me know.

I like to write to people: There’s generally a letter involved, but often I am prone to include things such as snippets of poetry; whole stories, or excerpts from a longer one; essays on random topics, or little origami models.

If you’d like to know more, or are willing to take a punt in the dark and see what inanities I can come up with, send me a message, with your address, and keep an eye on the letter-/inbox!

Help! On The Threshold of Geek Surfeit

My geekery seems to be expanding in unpredictable and unhelpful ways. Today this was highlighted by watching the first three editions of this year’s Springwatch. It started with getting the quiz on the first show right (as per my tweet) by recognising a Red Kite feather, but I was able to dismiss this on the grounds that that particular bird has always been my favourite raptor. However, things began mounting when I correctly identified a blurred photograph of a fish as being a trout – something even Chris Packham wasn’t able to do! A number of other niggling things kept cropping up, but then, still on the same program I realised my potential to recognise songs by the Manic Street Preachers…

Mr Packham has a tendency to try and sneak a song title into his script at least once an episode – most notably when he focussed on songs by The Smiths and scandalised the unwitting Kate Humble with the title “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby”. This season it would appear that he is using the MSPs, and I can only hope that it’s his lack of subtlety, leading to odd sounding grammar, which is bringing his references to my attention – not some creepy subconscious knowledge of the MSPs’ discography!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that my brain still has the capacity to retain bizarre little bits of information, but currently this skill is not what I need. In the middle of the exam period, what I could really do with is the ability to retain less bizarre, more topical, nuggets. Any suggestions as to how I can fix this would be greatly appreciated.

Really, please help me, before my mind explodes.

Revision 2011

It’s that time of year again – May/June is the bane of most students’ lives.

I have 7 exams this year, 2 of which I sat last week: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, and Continuum Mathematics. The first exam was bearable, the second much less so. Luckily, I had some friends from church who live round the corner from the venue and very kindly invited me for dinner. This gave me a chance to calm down and have a bit of time completely away from work, refreshing me for the revision to begin again on Saturday.

This Tuesday will see me sit exam number 3 – Optimisation Theory and Applications. Really, I should be revising for that now, but the progress seems to be going well enough that I have decided to call today my ‘day of rest’ to attempt to shake this headache in time for a blitz day tomorrow. To be honest, the likelihood is that I will actually return to work later this evening, but for now I’m just focusing on feeling better and not feeling guilty.

If anybody reading this is also going through exams at the minute or in the near future, I wish you all the best.

Quick Competition:
You may just be able to see in the photo that my pen is very kindly being held by a little man. This is my mascot, Dave the Spaceman, and his name has been carefully chosen for two specific reasons – if you can tell me what they both are, there may be a prize. It may possibly something as amazing as the smug feeling that comes from being right – like when you shout at the telly! Or perhaps something more tangible, like chocolate or something…

(More pictures of Dave ‘helping’ with my revision may well follow on Picasa, but for now, if you’re itching for more, you can check out my Facebook album ‘Revision 2011’)

‘Title’ seems to be the hardest phrase…

Howdy folks, it’s been a while.

I won’t bother to explain away my absence, but I can explain my re-emergence: I have a new schedule in place which is aimed at helping me to work more effectively. How does this affect my blogging? Well, part of this attempt to improve the quality of my work involves creating the appropriate ratio between work and breaks – 45 minutes working followed by a 15 minute break, as opposed to spending the whole hour ‘half working’, as well as regular, longer breaks.

As such, I now have specified periods in which to do ‘nothing’. Unfortunately, I don’t like feeling that any time is being completely unproductive, so I plan to use those times to revisit some of my old hobbies. These include things like origami and writing, and the blog seems like a useful place to chronicle the success (or otherwise) of this new schedule – somewhere that I could keep a clear chronology of my own progress, and where other readers could possibly also keep a check and perhaps give me some advice/suggestions to keep it going.

As this explanation has been quite long-winded, I won’t include any additional ramblings, but hopefully I’ll post something equally inane, if somewhat less topical, soon.

Trawling through old material...

... because work and life were getting too much.

I write a lot of random (and quite weird) stuff. Currently I'm writing an exposition about why you shouldn't pretend to be an expert on things which you really don't understand, but that will probably be a bit heavy-going, so before that I thought I'd give you something a little less moody.

This is an introduction to a piece of fiction which I have planned and may or may not write (I have numerous plans for different stories in various stages of development)... It's not very good, but it's certainly not as unpleasant as the essay that's on the go at the minute.

I'd value people's opinions on this as I don't normally share prose (in fact, it's fairly rare for it not to be burned upon completion).

Story Beginnings...

(This links to a Google Docs page, please follow it and take a look)

The last few weeks have not been great...

... and hence the lack of posting - I haven't even had a Word of the Week, let alone a chance to blog about it. Today has also been a bad day, I did almost no work, and the stuff I tried I got wrong.

The worst thing is that yesterday was great, and the weekend coming should be too. I spent the afternoon with friends from church yesterday - lovelier people you couldn't hope to meet - and on Friday one of my all time truest friends is (hopefully) coming to stay for a few days. So, all told, I should be in a good cycle, not a bad one. Unfortunately, if my mental state were that rational then I guess I wouldn't have all the issues that I seem to.

Just in case you were wondering, dear reader (although I doubt you were), here is a rough draft of what it's like to be me today. Caveat - This is only reflective of now, and is not a comprehensive, or even proof-read exposition of myself.

Life is that thing which you and I

Experience before we die.

A cacophony of feeling and thought,

The noise of any place you sit and wait.

To some of us,

THE single thought is thus:

When everything is said and done,

Death comes far too late.

Now They're Famous:

It's pretty cheesy and poorly edited, but here is a Promotional Short for the band Playing in Circles. The song featured is a cut-down version of one of their songs Our Life on CCTV which seemed vaguely appropriate. It's almost completely unauthorised by the band, but I think people should listen to them - I don't know if this will help or hinder that cause, but it's worth a try.

… of the Week (#15):

This week – Phrase of the Week (#2):

So I thought it would be nice, for a change, to look at the origin of another well known, if somewhat socially inurned, phrase.

Pig’s Ear

To make a pig’s ear of something is to make such a mess of a project that the result is considered useless. The phrase dates back to the Middle Ages when, if a craftsman – or more often the apprentice – was to make something so badly that it could not be used, it was called a pig’s ear. During this period in British history, it was considered that the only part of a pig which was completely inedible and unusable in any way was the ear.

… of the Week (#14):

This week – Word of the Week (#13):

 

esculent

n. A thing, especially a vegetable, fit to be eaten;

adj. Fit to be eaten; edible.

Losing the game:

Sometimes I think I'm just a pawn,

In that game you play with other people's lives.

You set up challenges throughout the day -

Knowing full well they can't be done.

Do you laugh, I wonder, as you watch us flounder?

Is it some sadistic pleasure you draw from our efforts,

Or is it just cold academia that drives your study?

Even as the night draws in and the game is at a lull,

Some other force, (or is it you?)

Denies me the rest I’m sure I'm due

And so, exhausted, it all begins again.

This viscous cycle spiralling down.

Until,

I fear,

The darkness will out.

I’m having a bad few weeks. My grades are getting worse instead of better; I feel less and less inclined to participate in daily domestic duties – from getting out of bed onwards (inclusive of all those little things which most people do instinctively everyday and which I used to be quite particular about); my laptop is increasing the speed of its descent into electronic senility and the result of my psychiatric evaluation is that in view of the severity, range and longevity of my many issues, the best course of action seems to be longer-term, more intensive therapy rather than guided self-help. There is, of course a waiting list for this type of therapy (aimed in part at helping those sorts of people who have self-harmed or felt suicidal tendencies…), so I have no idea when that will start, but I hope that it starts soon and is effective, because to be honest I’m starting to get a wee bit desperate.

Apart from anything else, I’m dying for one good night’s sleep, although if I woke up in the morning to find I wasn’t still utterly exhausted, I’d probably have a heart attack.

It’s had a big effect on my work: A lot of the time I’m like some sort of confused, sleep-deprived, geriatric zombie suffering from senile decay and when I’m not, I’m being overly hyper to try and compensate – both scenarios leading to general bad health and I’m left wondering how the group I’m working with can possibly make sense of anything I’m saying. On the subject of which – apologies if this is in appalling English, I will probably retract this post at some point in the future.

(Sorry for the shitty quality of the poem – it’s a first draft which I dashed off about 6 minutes ago purely to head this post… may or may not polish it off at a later date)

… of the Week (#13):

This week – Word of the Week (#12):

soss

v. To fit lazily on a chair; to fall at once into a chair.

If anybody’s reading, sorry for the break in posts, I’ve not had the best of times lately. I am hoping that I’m back on track now, although my coursework levels are set to soar again tomorrow, so don’t hold it against me if I’m not quite able to spring back into positivity (never really my strong suit anyway if I’m honest).

New Year Blues

I don't really have the time to write this - to much Uni work still to do. However, I've just had a panic attack and am trying to stave off the next one.

I'm aware that people in the past have permanently stopped reading my blog because of posts like this, and I'm quite happy for you to stop doing so too, although my only query would be 'why are you here in the first place?' This site was originally set up, as a part of my therapy, as a place where I could let rip in a way that I never could in person or in a diary. So, posts like this basically fulfil that remit, and if you don't like it, you are quite welcome to leave or silently curse me, but please don't post comments about how I should pull myself together/stop whining/get on with it etc. because doing this in this limited arena is aimed at helping me do just that in the real world.

Frankly, I don't care if no one reads my blog, for me it's all about the potential for anonymity, and although I am quite often really personal, this feels somewhat more detached. On here I can focus on my grammar and spelling, and the blog layout. It is precisely that focus - which I cannot achieve in conversation, that helps me to lessen the effects of a panic attack.

Of course, if you are reading this, then welcome and thank you very much. I am not completely anti-readers - on the internet that would be pretty stupid - it's only ignorant people that I don't like, but then I'm sure you're not. I'm also not anti-comments, and if you have some advice, some (constructive) criticism of myself or my blog, or just generally want to say hi, then I'd love to hear from you.

I had meant to do a bumper edition of ... of the Week this week, to make up for the silence over Christmas, but this will have to wait, as I really should be getting on with my coursework. I am very stressed, and this has probably contributed to the panic attack, not helped at all by finding out that I failed the last piece of (easier) coursework for this unit. I'm in a bit of a low state in general right now, and next week I think I might talk to my tutor about leaving/taking some time off, but I have two deadlines before that and so I'd better get on.

If you've made it this far, thank you and congratulations. Your prize is the answers to my Christmas Tree quiz, and my Word of the Week: Trepidation.